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.She must think that were the addressee notto comply without excuse, he would be to blame period, that is, from aperspective that the addresser and addressee can share as free and rational.Third, in assuming that an addressee is responsible for complying with ademand, the addresser must presuppose that she has an authority to relateto the addressee in demanding ways that would be illegitimate were sheto lack the authority.Each of these assumptions commits an addresser to a second-personalauthority deriving from second-personal competence.The first two illus-trate the Strawsonian point that reactive attitudes like blame always in-volve an aspect of mutual accountability, since they are always addressedfrom the perspective of someone as a second-personally competentperson (a member of the moral community) to someone as a(nother)second-personally competent person (and thus an equal member) (Straw-son 1968: 93).They thereby ultimately derive their authority to addresstheir implicit demands from this perspective.The third assumption makesexplicit a point that is implicit already in the first two, namely, that theauthority to hold responsible implies a distinction between legitimatelyrelating to someone in demanding ways that, however directive, do notamount to coercion because they are warranted by second-personal rea-sons (reasons that, it is assumed, an addressee could himself freely acceptand that holding himself responsible would require him to accept), onthe one hand, and relating to him in the very same ways without therelevant authority, which would then be coercion and therefore an ille-gitimate violation of the addressee s authority as free and rational, on theother.Consider, for example, an order delivered by a superior to an inferiorwithin a military chain of command.If a sergeant orders a private to doten pushups, she addresses a reason to him that presupposes her authorityto give the order and the private s obligation to obey it.So far, the onlyrelevant normative presupposition is of unequal authority; the sergeanthas the standing to give orders to the private, whereas the private has nostanding to give orders to the sergeant.But an order doesn t simply pointto a reason holding in normative space; it purports to address it second-personally and thereby to hold the addressee responsible for compliance.As second-personal address, an order presupposes that its addressee canfreely determine himself through accepting the reasons it addresses andCopyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College 260 Dignity and the Second Personthe authority in which they are grounded and hold himself responsiblefor complying with it.Any second-personal address whatsoever calls forreciprocal recognition of the authority it presupposes (in this case thesergeant s authority).It attempts to direct an addressee s will through theaddressee s own free acceptance of that authority.This ups the ante on the presupposed authority and consequentsecond-personal reasons, since it requires that the authority be one thatthe addressee can accept as free and rational.This is what follows whenwe combine Fichte s Analysis with Pufendorf s Point from the addressee sperspective.There must be a distinction between the addressee s (the pri-vate s) complying with a demand because of a desire to escape some evil,on the one hand, and his complying because he freely accepts the ad-dresser s (second-personal) authority and therefore the addressed second-personal reason, on the other.So although the sergeant, of course, ad-dresses her order to not just any rational person but to the private, thereis an important sense in which her addressee must be conceived to be a-person-who-happens-to-be-a-private.Second-personal address is alwaysto a free and rational agent.That is why an order can constitute a sum-mons the taking up of which requires an addressee to posit both himselfand his would-be superior as free and rational agents.In presupposing,therefore, that the private can accept her authority, the sergeant cannotsimply assume that he can be expected to accept this as a private.Nothingabout actually occupying that role can be relevant to whether to acceptthe norms and authority relations that define it.Rather the sergeant mustpresuppose that the private can accept the authority she claims as aperson, that is, from the (second-person) standpoint they both share asfree and rational, and that, as a person, he can accept the specific nor-mative requirements she attempts to place on him for the hypotheticalcase of occupying the role of private.In assuming that the private is responsible for complying with theorder, the sergeant is committed to thinking that the private would rightlybe blamed if he didn t comply without adequate excuse.But reactiveattitudes like blame address demands from a perspective they presupposetheir addressee can share.So although the sergeant assumes she has adistinctive authority to hold the private accountable, which goes with herspecial authority to issue the order in the first place, any such speciallyauthorized standing must ultimately be grounded in an authority shemust assume that the private shares with her (to hold himself account-Copyright © 2009 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Dignity and the Second Person 261able).Otherwise, threatening a sanction, even one he couldn t complainabout, would give him a reason of the wrong kind to comply.The reasonwould not be a second-personal reason to do the pushups whether ornot he could escape the sanction, one the acceptance of which is part ofholding himself responsible.So, finally, in making a claim on the private as free and rational in thisway, the sergeant must also presuppose a distinction between making alegitimate claim on the private s will in a way that respects his authorityas free and rational, on the one hand, and, on the other, attemptingillegitimately to direct his will by simply imposing her will on him insome way that depriv[es him] of [his] ability to act freely (Fichte 2000:41), that is, by coercion.However hierarchical, therefore, any address ofa second-personal reason also implicitly presupposes a common second-personal authority as free and rational.This is Pufendorf s Point fromthe addresser s perspective projected through Fichte s Analysis into thesecond-person framework in general.Suppose, for instance, that the sergeant believes that if the private dis-obeys, she will then be entitled to put him in detention.Seeing what sheregards as signs of incipient disobedience, she reminds the private of thisfact; she puts him on notice of a sanction that she would be authorizedto apply in holding him responsible.In so doing, she necessarily presup-poses a distinction between the justified threat of this sanction, which shemust suppose to be consistent with the addressee s freely determininghimself by the second-personal reasons provided by her order, on theone hand, and attempting unjustifiably to determine him to do the sameact by the mere threat of the very same unwanted alternative in whichthe sanction consists, that is, without the relevant authority, on the other.To use Hart s helpful terms, she must presuppose a distinction betweenobligating the private by an order and obliging him illegitimately by co-ercion (1961: 6 8).She must assume that although the private is subjectto her orders, it would nonetheless be a violation of his normativestanding to attempt to direct his will by threatening the very same evil ifshe lacked the requisite authority (and other things were held equal).Andthis commits her to presupposing his authority as a free and rationalagent
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